California has a shortage of teachers. Districts around the state are having a difficult time finding properly credentialed teachers. The shortage spans the K-12 spectrum. It’s not overly surprising.

When Wall Street, the banks, mortgage companies, and the real estate industry tanked the economy in 2008, people all over the United States were put into a very bad position. Many thousands of jobs across all kinds of industries were wiped out. Retirement funds were wiped out. Foreclosures sky rocketed. In short, a stunning number of ordinary working people in this country were ruined.

In California the situation was bad. State and local governments cut back expenditures radically. They had no choice as the money flowing into the treasury stopped. School districts across the state were, once again, having to slash budgets to stay afloat.

The first things to go were any programs that were in any way considered voluntary or “adjunct”. All kinds of really good initiatives in our schools were tossed. It wasn’t enough.

Schools generally spend about 80% of their budgets on salaries. Teachers make up the bulk of employees. An enormous number of teachers throughout the state were laid off. Over 32,000 teachers lost their jobs. This lasted right from about 2007 to 2014.

When it came time to hire teachers back it became obvious that a huge number of them left the profession for good. If you’ve got 10 or more years into the system, get lay off notices for 4 or 5 years, and actually get laid off, you might think about a different line of work. Which is exactly what happened.

Not only that, but the California State University system, that educates teacher candidates, saw a swift drop in the number of applicants. The number of potential teachers in the CSU system is ticking up, but it’s not fast and it’s not enough.

Districts are having to offer all kinds of incentives to draw applicants. Unheard of up to now, signing bonuses are on the table. Districts are going to the Universities to hire young teachers in the education programs months before they graduate and are granted a provisional credential.

Some districts in very high cost areas are building and offering subsidized housing to teachers. It’s an out front admission that the pay rate isn’t enough for teachers to be able to rent housing on the open market, let alone ever buy a place. Most of these places, the Bay Area, LA, and so on, place a time limit on how long the teachers are able to be in the subsidized housing.

Couple all that with the teacher and school system bashing that’s been taking place, and the lack of University students entering the teacher credentialing programs isn’t a mystery.

It will take some time to catch up, if it’s possible to catch up. That’s an unknown right now.